It is a stan­dard strat­a­gem de­ployed by regimes like an SOP – when a move­ment seems spin­ning out of its con­trol, tac­tics and ca­pac­ity to tor­pedo, it starts in­tro­duc­ing a lot of white noise into it. White Noise is a con­cept very fa­mil­iar to stu­dents of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­ries and ba­si­cally de­notes a strat­egy of drown­ing the mes­sage in mean­ing­less chat­ter de­signed to oblit­er­ate the core in­for­ma­tion. In con­ver­sa­tion with so­ci­ol­o­gist Prof Man­jit Singh and civil lib­er­ties ac­tivist and prac­tis­ing lawyer Ra­jiv Go­dara, WSN show­cases DALEEL with SP Singh.

SOME­THING sim­i­lar has been hap­pen­ing on the side­lines of the farm­ers’ ag­i­ta­tion against the three farm leg­is­la­tions rammed in by the Modi gov­ern­ment. A small group of farm­ers go­ing way­ward, the ugly scenes at the Red Fort, the prime min­is­ter, in his Mann Ki Baat mak­ing too much out of some per­ceived in­sult to the na­tional flag, and the ar­rests of many youth -all these are time tested tac­tics to turn the con­ver­sa­tion else­where.

In this de­bate, we dig our heels in, re­fus­ing to stray along tan­gents. With Prof Man­jit Singh, a so­ci­ol­o­gist by vo­ca­tion and train­ing and a pub­lic in­tel­lec­tual with years in ac­tivism, and Ra­jiv Go­dara, a prac­tis­ing ad­vo­cate by vo­ca­tion and with a long as­so­ci­a­tion with civil lib­er­ties strug­gle and grass­roots ac­tivism, this is a con­ver­sa­tion that ad­dresses the core is­sues and tries to peep into the fu­ture.

Pun­jab needs a new pol­i­tics, and so does In­dia. What will that be? And how will a Pun­jab, that has had the ex­pe­ri­ence of a peo­ple’s move­ment, search for it, or shape it?